


Slash+Save Supermarket

by salanaland



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Retail, Alternate Universe - Supermarket, Customer Service & Tech Support, Gen, I'm Sorry, authorial self indulgence, supermarket au, torturing Desmond
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-15
Updated: 2015-09-26
Packaged: 2018-04-20 23:20:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4806014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salanaland/pseuds/salanaland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Desmond never thought he'd have to work at Slash+Save Supermarket. Stupid recession. But at least maybe he could meet some friendly co-workers, right? Right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Desmond: New Hire

**Author's Note:**

> With lots of thanks to my gf, bettythebombgirl, for her support, suggestions, and the name Slash+Save.
> 
> If you know the supermarket this is based on, kindly don't mention it by name in the comments. I like my job (really) (honestly)

Desmond gulped nervously as he pushed open the door to the back room of his local Slash+Save Supermarket. He'd never imagined he'd work in one--he'd run away from home at 16 because of what it had made his father into--but here he was.

Stupid recession.

"Coming through!" a large man called, muscling a long, low cart full of milk crates past him.

"Excuse me?" Desmond asked. "Do you know where Mr. Ibn-La'ahad is?"

"Altaïr, you mean?" The man, a burly Native American, looked Desmond up and down. "You're the new guy? I'm Connor. Just Connor. You can't pronounce my other name."

"Hi?" Desmond reached a hand out, but awkwardly withdrew it when Connor didn't shake it.

"Altaïr's up there," Connor added, pointing up a rickety-looking staircase. "He'll show you how to clock in and everything."

Desmond thanked him and climbed the stairs, finding Altaïr slamming a phone back into its cradle. "Because I don't have enough to do today! Thanks, _Nick_!" He looked up at Desmond. "Ignore all of that. You're Desmond, right? I'm Altaïr."

Desmond nodded, and Altair grabbed an ugly orange polo shirt and black apron with the store logo stitched into it, a golden apple with the words "SlAsh+SAve" across it, with the funny shaped As that Desmond had seen all his life. "Welcome to Slash+Save. I'm supposed to give you an orientation packet but I ran out of them three months ago and still haven't gotten any more. The only useful thing it would tell you anyway is that you have to cover your tattoo. Come on, I'll have Mary make you a nametag and then you can get started learning the register."

Mary was a harried-looking person of indeterminate visible gender, who seemed to be at the courtesy counter and in charge of the cashiers. "Jack! Put that newspaper down and--oh, hi. New guy?"

"Mary, can you make Desmond a nametag?" Altaïr asked.

One of the cashiers called, "I need quarters!"

Mary groaned. "Maybe if **Madeleine** could come over and do **her** job, **I** could do **mine**." She left the courtesy desk and stomped over to a wooden cabinet, unlocked it, grabbed a roll of quarters, and brought them to an older blond man at the register.

"Thanks," he said with a grin. "You're the best."

"I'm the _only_ ," she muttered, stomping back to the desk. "Our Fearless Leader doesn't bother with us," she informed Desmond, punching his name into the label maker. She practically ripped the backing from the label and affixed it to an orange-bordered nametag. "Put that on your apron, that way you won't lose it when you wash your shirt. Oh, and remember to wash your shirt. I shouldn't _have_ to tell you that, but you never know. Yes, what?" she called to someone who had yelled her name, then went to go sort out the problem.

"Well, you're in good hands now," said Altaïr, clapping Desmond on the back and heading back to the office.

Mary stomped back to the desk and beckoned Desmond to the blond man's register. "I'm going to have you shadow Edward today," she explained. "You _should_ be doing your computer training today so you have some idea what a register even _is_ , but Madeleine in her infinite wisdom scheduled you for that next week, so Edward will explain it as you go along."

This wasn't at all what Desmond had expected.


	2. Adéwalé: Flower Derangement

Adéwalé sighed as he pushed a rack full of carnations past some bedraggled cilantro bits on the floor. "What's the point of sending Jack around the store to make sure it's clean, if he doesn't clean up things on the floor?"

Anne shrugged, leaning on the customer service desk and checking her shirt to make sure it was strategically unbuttoned. "So we can cover our butts when someone slips and falls."

Adéwalé huffed. "Maybe if he picked up the cilantro, people wouldn't slip and fall."

"Excuse me?" a customer asked. "Do you have any other flowers? I need a get-well bouquet for a friend, and I know exactly what I want. I need some roses, and some alstroemeria, and some statice, and I want three of the roses just off-center, and--"

"Ma'am," Adéwalé interrupted gently, "I can sell you the roses and the alstro, but we don't make bouquets."

"But I know exactly what I want! Can't you make it?"

"I'm sorry, but we're a small store, we don't even have a real floral department."

"Well..." she huffed. "Fine, I'll just get this orchid."

As the woman clop-clopped off to the registers, Anne asked, "I wonder how much she intended to spend on that bouquet, if a ten-dollar orchid is good enough."

Adé shook his head in disbelief. "Back to work, me trumps, those cantaloupes won't pack themselves out."


	3. Mary: R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Mary's day was going absolutely wonderfully, as usual. It was only 10 AM and already, a customer had thrown a notebook at her because she couldn't magically make a money transfer appear on her computer without the correct tracking number. Another customer had taken offense when she'd told his daughter to stop punching and kicking the video rental machine. _I wouldn't **have** to tell you how to parent your daughter if you'd actually **do** it yourself_ , she thought resentfully.

She _loved_ Sundays.

She loved them even more than ibuprofen-caused ulcers.

She loved them even more than the way her foot still hurt from the time the side of the baby formula cabinet fell on it.

"Hey, _boy_!" a voice called from right behind her. She turned, slowly, and stared. " _Man_ ," the woman tried.

"Yes, _lady_ , can I help you?" Mary asked, in a frosty voice. She didn't even care about the gender thing, but the disrespect?

"Why are you all so stupid?" the woman asked. 

"Excuse me?"

"People in this town buy a lot of organic milk. You should probably get in a lot of it so that you can sell more of it. That would get you more money, you know."

" _Lady_ , there's an organic milk shortage across the entire country right now. Believe me, we try to get in more of it. We just _can't_."

The woman scoffed. "I'm just saying."

"Thank you for telling us how to run our business," Mary continued mechanically. "Your input is valuable at Slash+Save." She pivoted on her heel and went to the service desk. "Aveline, what is _wrong_ with people in this town?"

Aveline shook her head. "Believe me, I wish I knew. Can you believe, this one lady once asked me to take her groceries to her car, and then she handed me this bag of trash to throw out? I told her, I don't know what year you think this is, but I'm not your slave." She craned her neck. "I don't know what that Dobby Carter thinks she's doing, but her light's off. You had better go check."

Mary sighed and stomped out to Dobby's register. "What's up?"

"Oh, I was just going to go on break."

"Dobby, I can't send you on break right now, Edward's leaving in five minutes and if Hope is late coming in like she usually is, I won't have _any_ cashiers."

"But I want my break now!"

"You'll have it as soon as Hope gets in, all right?"

"Who are _you_ to tell me what to do?"

Mary crossed her arms over her chest, incensed. "Your supervisor. I am literally paid to tell you what to do. Now turn your light back on and ring up customers, they're looking confused."

"No, I want my break."

"Fine. Edward, please, can you stay a few minutes until Hope comes in? Dobby, go upstairs and see Altaïr." As Dobby was stomping up the stairs, looking resentful, Mary called the office. "Altaïr, can you send Dobby home? She insisted on taking a break and leaving me with no cashiers, and mouthed off to me about it."

"Sure thing," Altaïr told her, and Mary was grateful that he was manager on duty today.

Now, of course, Edward had a line that stretched halfway down the baking aisle, and there was still no Hope. Mary went to the dairy section, where Connor was carefully turning all the yogurts so the logos lined up. "Connor, I know you hate being on register, but I'm desperate here. Please?"

Connor heaved a sigh. "All right. But only for _you_ , because you're nice." He took off his heavy gloves and left them on his yogurt cart as they walked to the front end.

"I'm not nice at all, you know that."

"You're nice to me. A lot nicer than you-know-who."

Mary didn't actually know who. Madeleine? Niccolo, the store manager? Haytham, who seemed to find something to criticize every time Connor passed through the back room? "Sure," she agreed. Whoever it was probably wasn't very nice. "I'm going to see if I can get Jenny or someone in, so you won't have to be on register that long. Thanks so much for helping!" Listening to Jenny talk incessantly about her guinea pig's ear infection was better than putting up with lip from Dobby, that was for sure.

"Take a deep breath," Aveline called. "It's only 10:30, and you still have to have someone do the Careen Sweep. Jack's not in until the afternoon."

Mary groaned. "Not like he actually cleans up the tripping hazards when he does it. Here, give me the scan gun, I'll do it." Taking the little cart up and down the aisles would at least get her away from the front end for a few minutes, and her sanity could use it.

After all, it was still only 10:30.


	4. Niccolò: Bags of Rage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An important announcement about Slash+Save's new bag policy goes awry when confronted with the Slash+Save workforce.

"All right," said Niccolò Machiavelli, the store manager. "At Slash+Save, we're trying to _slash_ our bag usage and _save_ the Earth."

Mary raised her hand. "This doesn't have anything to do with the fact that plastic bags now cost two cents apiece, does it?"

"This is the corporate talking point for our customers," Niccolò repeated. "Slash the bags, save the Earth."

Anne offered, "Craisins slash the bags quite effectively. Right in half."

"So do those clamshell packages of salad," volunteered Jenny. "The ones with the plastic bag inside the plastic box."

"Totally saving the Earth," Dobby chimed in.

"Corporate is a bunch of assholes," Hope grumbled.

"With hemorrhoids," Connor added.

"The upshot of this is," Niccolò broke in smoothly, "corporate is throttling our ability to order bags, so you'll have to make do with fewer."

" _How_?" Mary asked. "All the customers ask for double bags."

"Or triple," Hope complained.

Anne added, "And when they don't, the bags break and we have to double-bag anyway."

Jack roused himself from his semi-stupor long enough to say, "Double-bagging is how Anne and I had little little J--mmph mmph mmph!" Anne had covered his mouth.

"Please ignore Jack. Always," she said, smiling sweetly.

Altaïr laughed silently, pretending he had to scratch his nose.

Gist finally spoke up. "Well, I think it's great to use fewer plastic bags! I'm sure all of us can find some way to do that."

All the other cashiers rolled their eyes, and Aveline asked, "Are these going to be the same poor quality as the bags we've been getting?"

Niccolò shrugged.

Madeleine spoke up, finally. "We need to average more items per bag. Our number is too low. That'll help the bags last longer."

"Yeah!" Jack said. "Last night, a little old lady wanted her gallon of milk double bagged. I told her, lady, I'm only going to do that for you if you put **two** gallons of milk in it!" He beamed.

Niccolò rubbed his eyes; he was getting a headache. He'd never known such an obstreperous group of employees.

"Jack," said Altaïr gently, "We have to bag how the customer requests, even if it's stupid."

" _All_ the customers are stupid," Connor griped.

"No, only _almost_ all of them," Hope corrected him.

"Only most, I'd say," Dobby argued.

"Most, not all, but those who are, are stupid enough to make up for the ones who aren't," Aveline said.

"I just thought they were weird," Desmond mumbled.

"Weird in a stupid way," Jenny told him helpfully. She was flicking through pictures of her guinea pig on her phone, photo after photo of the orange furball eating and loafing around, sometimes both at the same time.

Madeleine raised her voice. "All right, ladies and gentlemen, I think that's enough of that." Mary mimicked her from behind, and Anne nearly burst out laughing.

"Thank you, Madeleine," Niccolò said, "Please make sure any cashiers who didn't attend this meeting know about our new bag policy."

Madeleine nodded to Anne. "You'll tell Edward, right?"

Anne blinked. "Uh, I guess so?"

Aveline rolled her eyes in Madeleine's direction. "Typical," she muttered so low only Mary could hear.

As they filed down the steps, Anne wheedled to Mary, "If you tell Edward, I'll make it up to you."

Mary eyed her skeptically. "How?"

Anne fluttered her eyelashes. "Sexually." There was a chorus of throat-clearing, and Desmond facepalmed.

Mary snickered. "I'll think about it."


End file.
